Ice Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the tail and landing on his backside. He shook his head. He and the female species never did know how to communicate.
    Then Bane was there, barking, snapping at the horse’s heels. Mariah might not respect Matt, but a half wolf was another thing. Old instincts ran deep. The mare leaped ahead, yanking on the tether.
    A groan of metal erupted behind him. Matt rolled around. The entire tilted fuselage of the Cessna canted to the side. A shout of alarm arose from inside. Then, with the popping sound of an opening soda can, the crumpled door broke away.
    Mariah reared up, but Matt returned to calm her. He undid the saddle hitch and walked her away, waving Bane off. He settled her at the edge of the clearing, then patted her flank. “Good girl. You’ve earned yourself an extra handful of grain tonight.”
    He strode back to the wreckage. The stranger was almost out of the plane. He was able to slide his trapped leg along the edge of the two crammed seats until he reached the open door. Then he was free.
    Matt helped him down. “How’s the leg?”
    The man tested it gingerly. “Bruised, and the worst damned charley horse, but nothing feels broken.” Now that the man was free, Matt realized he was younger than he first appeared. Probably no more than his late twenties.
    As they hobbled away from the wreckage, Matt held out a hand. “Name’s Matthew Pike.”
    “Craig…Craig Teague.”
    After they were well away from the plane, Matt settled the man to a log, then shoved away his dogs when they came up to nose the stranger. Matt straightened a kink from his back and glanced back to the plane and his dead friend. “So what happened?”
    The man remained silent for a long moment. When he spoke, it was in a whisper. “I don’t know. We were heading to Deadhorse—”
    “Over in Prudhoe?”
    “Prudhoe Bay, yes.” The man nodded, gingerly fingering his lacerated scalp. Deadhorse was the name of the airport that serviced the oilfields and township of Prudhoe Bay. It was located at the northernmost edge of Alaska, where the North Slope’s oil fields met the Arctic Ocean. “We were about two hours out of Fairbanks when the pilot reported something wrong with the engine. It seemed he was losing fuel or something. Which seemed impossible since we had just tanked up in Fairbanks.”
    Matt could smell the fuel still in the air. They had not run out of juice, that’s for sure. And Brent Cumming always kept his plane’s engine in tiptop shape. A mechanic before becoming a bush pilot, Brent knew his way around the Cessna’s three-hundred-horsepower engine. With two kids and a wife, he depended on that craft for both his livelihood and his lifeline, so Brent maintained his machinery like a finely tuned Rolex.
    “When the engine began to sputter, we tried to find a place to land, but by that time we were among these damn mountains. The pilot…he…he tried to radio for help, but even the radio seemed to be malfunctioning.”
    Matt understood. There had been storms of solar flares this past week. They messed with all sorts of communication in the northern regions. He glanced back to the wreckage. He could only imagine the terror of those last moments: the panic, the desperation, the disbelief.
    The man’s voice cracked slightly. He had to swallow to continue speaking. “We had no choice but to try to land here. And then…and then…”
    Matt reached over and patted the man’s shoulder. The rest of the story was plainly evident. “It’s okay. We’ll get you out of here. But I should see about that head wound of yours first.”
    He crossed over to Mariah and retrieved the first-aid kit. It was really a full med kit. Matt had assembled it himself, utilizing his experience in the Green Berets. Besides the usual gauze rolls, Band-Aids, and aspirin, he had a small pharmacy of antibiotics, antihistamines, antiprotozoals, and antidiarrhetics. The kit also contained suture material, local anesthetic, syringes, splinting material,